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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Israel & Palestine - No Peace Without Respect

People with strong religious beliefs at war all seem the
same, whether Christian, Muslim or Jewish, unless you’re one of them. They all
cite some version of God as their guiding light and interpret some element of
scripture to justify their position, and all of them are blind to the reality
of their double standards. I’m allowed to
hurt you but you aren’t allowed to hurt me.It’s a kind of skewed entitlement.

It’s easy to judge them and the world does. But anybody who
is honest with themselves will admit that at some point in their lives they
have been blind to their own unhealthy entitlement and unbalanced behavior. In our civilized society, teachers violate
pupils, parents take their anger out on their children and refuse to
acknowledge it, businesspeople destroy the lives of anybody who gets in their
way, priests and celebrities rape children.

It’s the same principle, I can do what I want but you don’t have the right to object. In
many ways our civilization is just a veneer. We’re still savages, unwilling to
pay the price of true civilization, which is understanding that all reactive and
punishing behavior is about scared and threatened people. Who can’t settle themselves
deep within and are unwilling to face their own abysmal fears and do something
about them.

Projecting their inner uncertainty
onto the material world and people around them. Using an
interpretation of some higher authority to justify what they’re doing, and clinging
to the ephemeral right and wrong that
never resolved an argument or a life’s crisis or a war. That never generated
love and never ever settled a person down deep within themselves.

It’s easy to look at Israel and Palestine and take sides on
principles, tagging onto right and wrong. It’s easy to judge Netanyahu who believes
he is civilized but behaves like a fundamentalist, and who doggedly refuses to
let Palestine have its own turf. It’s also easy to rationalize his behavior in
the face of missiles being launched at his country, as it is to rationalize Hamas’s
actions in the face of Netanyahu refusing to budge.

Or to judge Hamas for launching missiles indiscriminately. Or
to make sweeping generalizations in either case, no matter which side of the
right/wrong fence you stand. Harder is to step away and recognize that this is
just about people who feel threatened. We have a tendency to forget that no
matter what religion or race or nationality people are, they are affected by
the same principles of cause and effect in human behavior.

Israel and Palestine need to get to a place where they can recognize
each other’s humanity and say to each other “I see your vulnerability and I
empathize with it because it matches my own. We’re both afraid. We’re both
leading our own people towards destruction. So let us sit down and talk and
listen.” Until they do right and wrong
will rule and violence will continue to rape Israel and Palestine. Peace
treaties will come and go, as one side or the other is bullied or cajoled into
submission by other powers.

But neither side will ever win and it won’t be about peace.
It doesn’t matter who started the war. Somebody has to stop it. And you don’t
beat bullying with more bullying. You beat it with respect.